Carved jade ring: a wide band, cut from one block, worked in relief all the way round. A maned creature coils across it.
I do not give it a name. Dragon, qilin and pixiu look too much alike at this size, and a false entry reads as information. If the example I order makes it possible to decide, I will correct the page.
Bare stone, so nothing hinders the weighing. A stone ring cannot be resized. The size guide.
A carved jade ring: a wide band, cut from one block, worked in relief all the way round. A maned creature coils across it, and I am not going to give it a name I cannot vouch for.
In four lines
A wide band, worked in relief all the way round.
A maned creature, which the page does not name for want of certainty.
Bare stone: no mount, no seam, no metal.
It cannot be resized: a stone ring does not adjust.
Why I do not name the creature
The motif shows a maned beast, coiled across the width of the band, jaws open and legs folded. Three creatures of the Chinese repertoire look much alike at this size: the dragon, the qilin and the pixiu. They are told apart by details, the presence of horns, the number of claws, the shape of the tail, which this format does not let you read with certainty.
I could pick the most saleable of the three, and nobody would contradict me. A false entry reads as information, a cautious entry reads as what it is: the attribute table on this page therefore says relief motif, and the text says what can be seen.
If the example I order makes it possible to decide, I will correct the page and date the correction, as always on this site.
Carving a band, and what it asks of the stone
A carved band is not an engraved band. Material is taken away in depth, the relief comes out of the body of the ring, and the thickness varies greatly from one point to another. Every hollow is a potential start for a fracture, and most ornamental stones split before the roughing out is finished.
Jade takes it thanks to its toughness: its interlocked crystals resist the spread of a crack, a property that has nothing to do with hardness. It is what allowed polished axes to be made in the Neolithic, and it is what permits a deep relief on a band here. The difference between hardness and toughness.
The drawback is upkeep: the hollows hold soap and cream, and they dull faster than the polish. A soft toothbrush and lukewarm water are enough.
What you can look at yourself
On a carved piece, look at the bottom of the hollows. On a dyed stone the colourant sits heavier there than on the surfaces, because it had more purchase on a less polished zone. On a stone coloured through its mass, hollow and surface are the same tone.
Then look at the regularity of the relief. A resin casting gives sharp, identical edges everywhere. A worked stone keeps its hesitations: a deeper stroke here, a blunted edge there. The checks that need no equipment.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to guardian beasts and to jade
What follows changes register, and I flag it rather than blending it into the rest of the page. Nothing here is demonstrated. These are customs and beliefs, which I report because they are part of the history of this stone. No piece in this shop is sold as a remedy, and I claim no effect for this one.
The guardian beastsManed beasts set at the entrance of Chinese buildings, temples or banks, are lions in the Buddhist tradition, often called foo dogs in the West. The repertoire also contains the qilin and the pixiu, and the three are regularly confused even in the trade. What tradition puts into a jade bracelet.
Carving rather than polishingThe oldest Chinese jades are polished rather than carved: the Neolithic axes and discs show no relief at all. Deep carving comes much later, with iron tools and abrasive powders, and it marks a change of craft, not of belief.
The jade you patinate by handChinese usage holds that a jade worn every day becomes warmer and brighter with the years. What changes is the surface, polished by friction and by the natural oils of the skin: the effect is real, the explanation is mechanical.
White before greenCultivated Chinese taste long placed white nephrite at the top, well above green. The present hierarchy comes from the trade in Burmese jadeite, and it is a matter of fashion rather than of quality.
Dispatched within 48 hours of your order being confirmed, for delivery within 14 days from dispatch. I keep no buffer stock, and I won’t promise a timeframe I couldn’t meet.
Postage charges
€6.99 to any destination, free on orders of €47 or more to France, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The exact amount appears in the cart before you pay.
The packaging, and why it matters
Every piece ships in its own pouch, kept apart from the others. This isn’t about presentation: the hardness of jade is ordinary, between 6 and 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite, and the quartz in everyday dust sits at 7. Two pieces of jewellery that travel together end up scratching each other.
Fourteen days to change your mind
With no need to explain yourself. An email is enough to open a return, there is no form to fill in. Return postage is at your expense, unless the piece doesn’t match its listing or arrives damaged.
The wrong size is the main reason for a return in this category, and jade cannot be resized the way a solid metal band can. Two minutes of measuring almost always prevents it. The size guide.
Warm water, mild soap, a soft cloth. A very soft brush for the hollows of a carving. That’s all, and it’s enough.
What you must never do, and why
No ultrasonic cleaner, no steam, no solvent, no heat source. This isn’t a token precaution: the treatment status of my pieces is not established. My supplier doesn’t know, and weighing establishes the mineral without saying anything about a possible resin impregnation. Resin tolerates neither heat nor solvents, so every piece is handled as though it might contain some. The information sheet on treatments.
Scratches, and where they come from
Jade is tough, meaning very hard to break: its interlocking crystal structure resists fracturing, and that is why axes could be shaped from it in the Neolithic. Its hardness, on the other hand, is ordinary, 6 to 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite. The quartz in everyday dust sits at 7: that is what dulls jade, not knocks. The difference between the two.
Day to day
Put the piece on after perfume and cream, never before. Take it off for housework, gardening and sport, where the knocks against corners happen. Store each piece on its own, in its pouch. On a strand of beads, the thread wears out before the stone: it gets restrung, and there is nothing abnormal about that.
My name is Jade. I’m French, from Morbihan, and based in Tallinn. I choose the pieces and have them set: I mine nothing, I cut nothing, and I don’t do the metalwork myself. The work I do is the sorting, and with this material that is what decides everything.
I am neither a gemmologist, nor a lapidary, nor a therapist, and I don’t claim to be.
I weigh, I don’t certify
Before putting a reference online, I order one example of it for myself. When it reaches me unset, I weigh it in air, then suspended from a thread in a glass of water: the ratio of the two masses gives the density, and that figure separates jadeite, nephrite, serpentine and dyed quartzite without ambiguity.
One example per reference, not every piece. I don’t handle the piece that goes out to you, and I would rather say so than let you believe otherwise. The method, with its three limits.
What I can’t know
The treatment status of my pieces. My supplier doesn’t know, and the scales say nothing about it: they establish the mineral, not the resin impregnation. Only infrared spectroscopy in a laboratory would settle it, and I don’t have that done. So you will never read “jadeite A”, “type A” or “untreated” on this site. The information sheet.
Where my jade comes from
No Burmese jadeite, and the first reason is a legal one. Not the reason you read everywhere: the JADE Act of 2008 did indeed ban these stones in the United States, but that ban was lifted on 7 October 2016. What applies today dates from 8 April 2021: the US Treasury sanctioned Myanma Gems Enterprise, the state-owned company that controls the Burmese gem trade. So there is no general ban, but an American is not allowed to trade with that entity, and a stone never tells you where it has passed through. One single supply chain for ten markets: it has to hold up for the most demanding of them. When an origin isn’t confirmed to me in writing, the listing doesn’t state it. My sourcing policy.
